Training, week of 6-1-09

This week was a bit hit-or-miss for me. I intended to run 70-80 miles, but a few things came up that kept me to 52.

Monday: 7 miles: loop through older Mahtomedi residential area, around 5:50s

Tuesday: 10 miles: 3 mile warmup, 3 mile cooldown (both still reasonable pace, around 7/mile), 4x mile in 5:24, 5:21, 5:18, 5:19, done on the 8 minute, good anaerobic work to some extent, but not terribly hard

Wednesday: 14 miles: This was probably the best quality run of the week. I goofed around with a long loop in Kathryn Abbot like, then popped out on the exit near the road leading to Hilton Trail, went right on hilton trail, and left right before the highway to get to the gateway state trail at the entrance I don't usually take. There's a decent little 2 to 3 minute loop in someone's backyard near the entrance, so I may or may not have trespassed to run it before jumping back on the trail. This first bit was pretty easy, but I started to hammer it when I hit the trail. I took the trail past Stillwater Road and all the way to Jamaca, where I turned left. I ended up going way farther on Jamaca than I intended (usually I turn left at 80th, ie the dirt road, but I decided to explore a bit more today). I figured I'd have another good left turn, but I eventually realized that wasn't going to happen. I ended up going all the way to Dellwood Road or Avenue (whichever one crosses Jamaca, I can't keep them straight), going left, looping through on Ivy Avenue, doing the little cul-de-sac loop that runs off in the middle and taking a right back onto Jamaca since Ivy intersects both Dellwood and Jamaca (sort of just cuts the corner between the roads). By this point, I was getting pretty tired since I was still tempoing hard, but I was out later than I intended and Jamaca is pretty unsafe at night (lots of car accidents, don't even want to think what could happen when running), so I kept up the pace. I took a right on 80th, a left by St Andrews, right on Stillwater, left on Mahtomedi, and then back the usual way. In total, this was just under 14 miles on mapmyrun and I did it in 85 something, so I was somewhere around 6:10s for the whole thing, pretty fast, especially considering that the first 2 miles were probably around 6:30s. When I finished I felt pretty sore...

Thursday: 17 miles: I ran about 8 3/4 miles out to a house in Dellwood to meet a girl that had run on my cross country team in high school that I've been hanging out with while back home. She declined running super far with me, but instead road her bike along side me. The way back was a little shorter, more like 8 1/4, after which she road home the other way around WBL. I really didn't feel very good before/during/after this run since Tuesday probably slowed me slightly and Wednesday slowed me quite a bit. My left shin was really quite sore by the end, which had me a bit worried (it's getting better now, but I'm having to be really careful and stretching a lot). Total running time was around 1:50 for an average pace of roughly 6:30, though that has to be taken with a grain of salt since I took a 10-15 minute break when I got to her house (obviously stopped the clock) and a 2 or so minute break (also stopped the clock) halfway through the run home to hydrate and eat a gel since I wasn't quite feeling on top of my game. When I finished, my leg was super sore, so I decided at this point that I probably wasn't running on Friday, especially since I was debating the idea of doing a 5k on Saturday.

Friday: Rest

Saturday: 4 miles: mile-ish warmup, plus 5k in the horrible rain out at Finnegan's Get Lucky 5k Run (or crawl) which was held in conjunction with the World Beer Pong Championship and some concert at the CaBooze bar (basically a biker bar) in minneapolis. New PR, 16:34 as described in my last blog post.

Sunday: Rest. My leg was feeling close to fine and I wanted to run, but my dad had paid somethign crazy like $120 to get a fitness assessment for me (VO2 max test, body fat, and other things) on Monday and I was instructed not to exercise the day before. (unfortunately, the stupid thing had to be postponed a day since their equipment wasn't working right when I showed up on Monday, so I could've run. There was no chance that I was going to take 2 days off and end up with 4 miles over a span of 4 days so I ended up ignoring their instructions about not running the day before and running today, Monday, so hopefully that won't screw me over too badly for my testing tomorrow... haha....)

Total: 52. 48 was in 4 days, which is reasonably good, considering the pace at which I was running.

Next week: Bear Lake Marathon in Utah is on Saturday, so I did a 6 mile tempo today at a pace that I could've held for at least a few more miles (monday, will discuss in next week's post), have plans for a short/easy track workout tomorrow, an easy trail run on Wednesday, and I probably won't run on Thurs/Fri since I'll be driving out to Utah and arriving on Friday night just in time to get a bad night's sleep before the marathon. :)

I didn't want to run Bear Lake at all since I'm getting awfully sick of this "run really well for a week or 2 and then taper for yet another race" crap and I want to just do consistent high volume at this point, but I need it to get into St George, so whatever... After this, odds are extremely high that I won't race anything major until August, and really, I'm going to do my very best not to do anything that will put me out of training for more than a day or 2 in either of my August ultras so I can focus on my October marathon, so really the marathon is the one race that's really consuming my mind, not my summer ultras. That being said, I'm going to probably do a local 5k or 2 over the summer just to get my time under 16 minutes, but those don't really count as major races and they don't require more than a 1-day taper or any sort of recovery, so whatever.

One other thing added to the schedule: Helen Klein 50. This is run on Halloween this year and I'm very psyched to run this. Since I'm now planning on an early October marathon, I'll have 4 weeks between the 2, which would give me enough time for 2 major long runs on back to back weekends in October just to make sure I've got the ability to run fast for 50 miles. HK50 is completely on roads and it will be the first road ultra I've done since my loop-course ultramarathon debut and that 24 hour (that got cut at 60 miles due to rain) back in 2007, so I'm setting high, but reasonable expectations for this. I think it's possible to run it entirely under 8 minutes/mile (6:40:00), but to be conservative I'm setting my goal at 7 hours, still a good time for 50 miles on any course.